Project Virgin

by Megan Crane

  “I think it’s that he feels that I prioritize Amos over him,” she said instead. She shrugged. “Which, of course, I do. Amos pays the bills.”

  “I would have thought the stock options you almost certainly have do that.”

  She didn’t quite smile at him, but Michaela saw that bright thing in his gaze, mirroring back the look in her own eyes. She didn’t want to think about what that look might tell him. What he might see.

  “It’s not as if I’m a wage slave,” she conceded, after a moment. And then she continued, straying into territory she’d thought was locked up tight and hidden away forever. “Though it’s possible that I might have given Terrence that impression.”

  “Did you, now.”

  “I didn’t mean to lie to him,” she hurried to tell him. “He made a few assumptions early on and I never corrected him. That’s not lying. That’s merely failing to clarify a few points.”

  “Or maybe,” Jesse suggested, his voice as light as that look in his eyes was not, “there’s a reason you don’t trust him.”

  Michaela felt a kind of pressure in her head and a tightness in her throat, matching that constricted feeling banded around her chest, and still, she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She couldn’t seem to keep herself from talking. She couldn’t even manage to break eye contact with Jesse, though he’d said something she knew she should disagree with. Forcefully.

  Maybe, that same traitorous something murmured, it’s because you don’t disagree with him at all.

  “The reality is that I love my job,” she told him instead. “I don’t want to argue about it, so I let Terrence think whatever he wants.” That was the truth. It wasn’t the whole of the truth, but it was still the truth. She pushed on past the tightness that was making her feel shaky. “Amos and I made it up as we went along. It’s not as if I could slide over and do the same thing somewhere else. It’s a position that was tailor made for me. By me.”

  “Is that what Terrence wants you to do?” Jesse asked mildly. Too mildly, maybe. “Go work somewhere else? Like, maybe for him in one of these unnamed ventures that you’re sure will work out eventually?”

  “Working together might be an eventual goal, sure,” she replied, evasive even to her own ears.

  “Has it occurred to you that Terrence knows exactly what you do for Amos Burke and exactly how much you’re worth, Michaela?” His voice was still so light, so easy, but there was a ferocity in set of that jaw of his. In that look in his dark eyes. “I understand that to accept that, you might also have to consider the possibility that he’s a little more of a con man than he is marriage material.”

  Michaela couldn’t process any of that. She refused to process any of that. She needed to stomp on the brakes before she toppled over a cliff here and couldn’t climb back out. She knew it.

  Jesse looked at her across the table that had seemed roomy when they’d sat down, but had shrunk since. And Michaela was so aware of him. She knew him, now. Not the person he was, maybe, after less than twenty-four hours in his company, but the shape of him. The physical reality of him, how he took up space. How the crook of his neck smelled after a night’s sleep. The slide of his hard thigh against the tender skin of hers. The indulgence of his laughter, of his gruff scowl. There were so many different kinds of intimacies, she thought in something like a panic. So many competing complications.

  “I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Terrence to want me to consider him the most important man in my life,” she said carefully. So very carefully, as if everything hung in the balance. As if there wasn’t a little prickle of awareness deep inside of her, telling her she’d gone too far and it was already much too late.

  And Jesse didn’t shift that gaze of his from hers for an instant, dark and hot and unflinching, as if he knew it, too. As if they’d been headed here all along.

  “Is he?” he asked.

  Chapter Seven

  ‡

  What little daylight there was disappeared entirely around midafternoon, and Jesse’s cabin fever set in with a vengeance.

  It had been a long, strange day. No surprise, after where they’d ended up in the conversation he should have known better than to have in the first place. Their breakfast had wrapped up in a significantly more subdued mood than it had begun. Michaela had tried to pay the check, Jesse had employed a little bit of sleight of hand to prevent it and pay it himself for reasons he didn’t care to examine, and there had been far too much time over the last of their coffee to sit there and simmer in the mess he’d made with all those freaking questions to begin with.

  And of course, Michaela hadn’t answered the most important question. It hung between them, expanding and taking on weight and mass with every second she didn’t address it.

  Which was answer in itself. Jesse imagined they both knew that.

  Just as he knew he had no answer for why he’d put her on the spot. Or no answer he liked, anyway.

  They’d made their way back across the snowy road not long after that, then settled into their snow day as new flakes began to swirl down outside. They’d each taken calls, pulled out their laptops, acted as if they happened to be sharing a work cubicle there in their little room. Michaela had made up the bed, as if that might divert attention away from the fact it was a bed. Jesse made surprisingly decent coffee in the doll-sized coffeemaker, which sat next to the TV. Sometimes, when they were both on the phone with their offices, one of them would step into the bathroom or out the front door for a little shred of privacy. They didn’t talk to each other much.

  You talked more than enough this morning, he’d reminded himself. And since when do you want to talk, anyway?

  But that was another question he didn’t have any intention of answering.

  Jesse couldn’t have said he got a lot done, especially when he’d expected he’d be back in Seattle and working on his problem job site today, but it was certainly a shift to spend some time with a woman who didn’t give him shit for always being on his phone when he was away from the office.

  You are messed up, he told himself then, glaring out at the cold, snowy parking lot as he ended another call to one of his project managers. Because the thought was insane and he knew it. He wasn’t in any kind of relationship with Michaela. They were snowbound together, nothing more, and he thought maybe he should hold off on going back inside the motel room until he got that a little straighter in his head.

  The last woman he’d spent any time with outside of a bed and therefore gotten to know at all was Angelique. Treacherous, two-faced, purposefully useless Angelique, who would have gone out of her mind in a situation like this. No spa, no magazines, no shopping. She’d have hated Jesse spending time on the phone when he could have been entertaining her instead. She would have complained the entire way to and from the restaurant, until Jesse had done something like pick her up and carry her, which would have been her goal from the start.

  Angelique would have pretended to be mad at him for causing this delay, this incredible inconvenience to a woman who barely worked and thus had very little to do with herself whether snowbound or not, and he’d have had to cajole her into a better mood. Usually in a way that had involved sex. Eventually. If she’d felt he’d earned it. And of course, he would have thought all of that was fun, because it had been. She had been. Angelique had been crazy in the way some women were, when they thought beauty and sex were their only currency, and they wanted to make sure a man was invested. Hell, Jesse had been invested. He’d thought he was in love with her.

  But handling Angelique would have been what he’d spent the day doing. He wouldn’t have taken all of these calls, or if he’d absolutely had to take them, he’d have been stressed out the whole time and then she’d have made him pay. He let out a long breath now, watching the cloud of it hang before him in the air, and tucked his hands beneath his armpits so he could take a few more minutes out here in the cold. A few more minutes without Michaela’s efficient, professional voice in his ears, or the
sight of her sitting in the armchair, typing furiously on her laptop while wrapped in a scarf and a bulky sweatshirt—about as far away from Angelique’s seductive, throaty whisper and deliberately provocative presentation as it was possible to get.

  Jesse was in so much trouble.

  Would he have stopped himself last night? Had he been making a move or merely making a point? How could he not know?

  Michaela wasn’t free. Not even close. She was in an “open” relationship with a con man that even she didn’t think was all that open—or not open to Jesse, anyway, which he supposed was some kind of backhanded compliment. Lucky him. And that was when she wasn’t preoccupied with her own very high-octane and demanding job, something he, as someone who was equally focused on his own work, found as hot as he did impressive. And God help him, he wanted a taste of her.

  He wanted more than a taste.

  Jesse turned and eyed the door to their room, knowing the worst thing he could do was walk back in there, feeling the way he did then. She was warm and soft. The moisturizer she used was gently scented with vanilla and something else that drove him crazy. He’d left her sloped over the arm of the chair, her feet dangling and one arm thrown over her head as she talked through a set of bullet points with someone she obviously found challenging, something he could tell from her posture but not the cool, professional voice she used.

  Which made him feel edgy. Needy. Very, very hungry.

  He found everything about her way too hot, if he was honest. The dark hair she’d piled on the top of her head as if she hadn’t given a single thought to it since she’d shot out of bed this morning. The jeans that clung to her hips with the temptingly low waistline he wanted to explore with his mouth. The same magenta shirt she’d been wearing at Grey’s, layered over a t-shirt and why the hell was he risking frostbite out here, thinking about unwrapping her like his very own Valentine’s Day gift? What the hell was happening to him?

  When his phone buzzed again he decided it was divine intervention, giving him one last shot at not being such an asshole.

  “Hey, Uncle Jason,” he said, calmly enough, once he glanced at the screen and swiped to take the call.

  But Jason Grey never said unnecessary things. Or anything at all, if that was possible. Not even a hello.

  “Did you beat that storm?” he asked instead. “Heard it dumped on Missoula.”

  “It’s still dumping on Missoula,” Jesse said, scowling at the swirl of snow coming down from above, as if it planned to keep snowing forever. And what would be left of him if it did? He didn’t want to think about it. “We had to stop last night when we lost all visibility on I-90. We’re holed up somewhere east of Mount Jumbo.”

  Jason made one of those noises of his. It could have been commiseration. It could have been something else entirely, like incisive commentary on the harsh realities of Montana winters. The again, he could have been clearing his throat because he had a completely unrelated cold.

  “What’s the timeframe on getting back here?” he asked, the noise a mystery. “Still going to go all the way to Seattle when the roads clear?”

  Jesse had initially figured he’d fly back to Seattle to deal with the little speed bump in one of his projects this morning, then turn around on Tuesday or Wednesday and subject himself to the big family dinner his grandmother was planning out at Big Sky the following weekend. It took a chunk out of his planned family time, but it couldn’t be helped. Then the weather report had made driving seem like the better option, Jason had thrown him the keys to the SUV, and here he was.

  Losing his mind in a dingy little motel room with a woman he didn’t know well, but knew better than to want.

  “Maybe another day in Seattle on the back side,” he said now, like none of that was affecting him. “I should be back in Marietta before the weekend.”

  Jason grunted. Jesse interpreted that as warm wishes on his safe travels, there and back.

  “Did you plan this?” he asked, before he could think better of it and stop himself. It was the cabin fever getting to him, he figured when there was no pretending he hadn’t said it. Or the cold making his hands—and all the rest of him, for that matter—feel raw.

  “I don’t plan snowstorms,” Jason said in his gruff way. “But they happen all the same. With alarming regularity in these parts, in case you forgot out there in the big city.”

  “I meant Michaela,” Jesse said, already deeply regretting whatever urge he’d had to bring this up. He ran a hand over his face and tried not to imagine the expression his uncle would be wearing right now, all that incredulous scorn mixed with bone-deep grumpiness. “You’re the one who entered me in that damned auction with all that crap about checks I couldn’t cash.”

  “Oh, son.” And Jason let out that laugh of his that sounded a whole lot like another man’s shout, and promised all kinds of retribution Jesse didn’t really care to consider just then. “I don’t do Disney. If I’m the one playing fairy godmother in your little stuck-in-the-snow scenario here, you’re in a world of hurt.”

  But of course, Jesse already knew that.

  Now his uncle knew it, too. Awesome.

  He didn’t understand how any of this was happening to him.

  Jason hung up on him, still laughing Jesse shouldered his way inside the room, cursing himself for being such an idiot, and nearly ran straight into Michaela as she came bursting out of the bathroom at the same time.

  He should have jumped out of the way. He should have done anything but what he did, given where his head had been all day—but Jesse couldn’t seem to stop himself from grabbing her and holding her there, in front of him and too close to him, his hands wrapped around her upper arms and her pretty face upturned and right there—

  “Your hands,” she said, though there was a storm in her bright hazel eyes, hectic and wild. “Your hands are so cold.”

  “It’s cold out there.”

  She laughed, as if there wasn’t this tension winding between them. As if they weren’t stuck here, pretending to ignore the raging chemistry between them. He didn’t understand how he wasn’t already inside her, and who cared how complicated it was—

  But he did, he reminded himself. He cared. Didn’t he?

  “Really?” she teased him, and it took him a second to work out that she was still talking about the cold outside, and coming off of him like a scent. “I didn’t notice, with all the snow banks and the slippery ice and the treacherous mountain passes.”

  “Let me remind you,” Jesse suggested, because he obviously had some kind of death wish, or maybe he just wanted to torture himself.

  He took his hand off of her arm and he didn’t even question what he was doing as he reached down, then slid it up under her shirt and that bulky sweatshirt she wore, sliding his big, ice-cold palm directly against the soft skin of her belly.

  Michaela yelped and jumped, then clapped her hands to his as if she wanted to pry it from her body, but he kept it there anyway. Easily. And then the next thing was they’d moved, or he’d backed her into the wall, and she wasn’t making that high pitched noise any longer. And her hands were still on his, but she wasn’t struggling against him, she was holding his hand right there where it rested against her skin.

  And he could feel her tremble underneath his palm, as if it was rolling out of her from deep within.

  She was soft. So deliciously, dangerously warm, and the heat of her poured into him, the contrast to his near-frozen hand electric. Almost painful. He let go of her other arm and put his free hand on the wall, right there near her head. He didn’t step back. If anything, he angled himself closer.

  Much too close to her mouth.

  He swallowed hard, kept his gaze on hers, and moved the hand against her belly.

  Incrementally. Experimentally.

  Michaela shuddered. Her face flushed hot and red, her eyes went dark, her lips parted, and he was a goner. He was lost.

  He was ravenous.

  Her eyes were huge and the gloss
y, glassy dark made him ache, and he could see her pulse in her neck. Wild. Fast. Exposing her and calling to him at the same time. He leaned closer, as if he might put his mouth on her neck, just to taste her excitement. Michaela tipped her head back, tilting that mouth of hers closer to his.

  This was more than thin ice. This was insanity.

  The images in his head were erotic. Pure madness. They wouldn’t have to make it to the bed. He could have her right here. He could pull her leg over his hip and lift her up the smallest bit, lean back and drive home, and take the edge off, fast and furious. Then take her to bed when they caught their breath and indulge himself more thoroughly.

  But first, he had to taste her. He had to taste her or go mad, though he knew, somehow, it wasn’t a madness he could escape. There was no working it out of his system the old fashioned way, not with this woman. Not with Michaela. That one taste would never be enough, it might even make all of this worse.

  Jesse didn’t have it in him to care.

  He moved his hand again, taking it slowly, deliberately, from that faintly rounded belly of hers and smoothing his way higher until his fingers brushed the scalloped edge of the bra she’d worn to ward him off last night. He’d never wanted anything more, just then, than he wanted to free her breasts and worship them with his own two hands.

  And his mouth. And his teeth. And his tongue.

  And she shuddered again, hard and deep, and he thought he might die if he didn’t—

  Michaela moved, then. Fast.

  She ducked under his arm and she staggered as she moved back toward the bathroom door. Her phone rang, but she didn’t react. She didn’t even look in its direction. She stared at Jesse, and he thought he probably had the same look on his face, shell-shocked and sensual, as if he was completely destroyed and yet still strung out on that edge.

  “There are only so many lines I can cross until I’m not me anymore,” she said, and her voice was harsh and hoarse and there was a sob in it, too, waiting to crack wide open.